


Lament

by Emerald_Pearl



Category: NCIS
Genre: Angst, F/M, drunken angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-02
Updated: 2014-06-02
Packaged: 2018-02-03 04:58:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1732043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emerald_Pearl/pseuds/Emerald_Pearl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post-"Dagger". Jimmy Palmer, vodka in hand, mourns his relationship with Michelle Lee.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lament

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: NCIS = not mine. Jimmy Palmer and Michelle Lee = not mine. Jimmy Palmer's angst = mine. That's it.

Jimmy Palmer pegged himself as a beer kind of fellow. Light, a little goofy, with the tendency to linger after his departure. Perhaps a white wine, or a tequila. Nothing heavy, or hard, nothing too intense. And he was right.

But tonight, Palmer was on a mission to become as drunk as possible, as quickly as possible, alone in his apartment except for the fifth of vodka next to him.

            _Michie…_

It wasn’t fair. He took another swig from the bottle, ignoring how much he'd already drunk. He knew that he was taking her death harder than he should have. But the betrayal was harder to stomach. His own insecurities, the typified Beauty, deigning, _willing_ to pair herself with the Autopsy Gremlin.

He drank, remembering the smell of her hair, the twist of her smile - half innocent, half coy - her plain clothing masking her trim figure.

Palmer slid easily from his seat on the loveseat onto the wooden floor.

            _Michie…_

He slammed his fist down onto the floor. He didn’t feel anything. He slammed his fist onto the floor again. He heard the picture frames on his kitchen table rattle, but still didn’t feel anything.

He wasn’t being irrational, he told himself. A woman he cared for, worked alongside, had been revealed as a mole inside NCIS. He had learned this, and taken it in relative stride. And then, not a week later, he had received news of her death. Palmer had still cared for her, then. He didn't know if he was angry at her for betraying the government. He couldn't have been angry at her for personal reasons; she'd never turned on _him._

But to be angry at himself, for dreaming that they could be together? For feeling the fool and realizing how unlikely that dream was? Not irrational at all, he told himself, half as a consolation, half as an excuse.

He drank more.

He wasn’t angry with any of them. Not her, not Dr. Mallard. Palmer wasn’t even angry with Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs. He knew that she had asked Gibbs to open fire, to kill the perp. He understood that she would have been locked up for her crimes, and never trusted again. He understood that shooting her redeemed her, in some perverse way, in the eyes of Gibbs, her sister, and NCIS.

He understood, but that didn’t mean he liked it.

He took another drink.

They had drunk together, before. The first time, it had been late evening, they'd both stayed long past work hours, and he had come to see her with a shy smile and an invitation to go out for a drink. They had already been sleeping together for some time, but had never been out together. She had giggled (he swooned, craving her giggles) and acquiesced. It had been beers, then, until she revealed a fondness for red wine, and rum. He had laughed, and confessed that he was more of a tequila man, himself. After that, drinking together became a treat, on the weekends, at night, once in a blue moon. They found that they had a lot in common – the slight claustrophobia, and love of romantic comedies and film noir, and their ability to devour carrots by the pound.

And neither of them liked vodka; bitter tastes and bitter memories came from drinking vodka.

In an ironic toast to her, he drank again.

 _Michie_ …

He had called her that, once, an affectionate shortening of her name, and she had flinched. He hadn’t known why, and hadn’t asked. After she died that he learned of her sister, her secret, her only family, who had called her the same.

He drank again.

Palmer wondered what else had she’d kept from him. Besides her sister, that is. If she had been willing to rat out her employers, her government, her _country_ , then what was to stop him from imagining anything else she could have used to trick him? He slammed his hand onto the floor, but the impact was weakened by the alcohol he knew coursed through his circulatory system.

He drank.

_Oh, Michie…_

A lament, a requiem. Palmer didn’t understand, really. He couldn’t, and he wouldn’t. They had known each other for a few months, six or seven at the most. Was it possible to become so attached in so short a time? Was he growing soft, becoming distracted, by that most simple of emotions?

He took another drink.

He wondered why he had never doubted her before, if her sister was truly worth more to her than the security of the free world. He wondered if she knew how close he had been to asking her to be his girlfriend, officially, like in high school. His thoughts whirled; he could _see_ them as he stared out the window at the light rain, twirling like snowflakes as they fell from the typewriter in his mind. Was it his thoughts, or was it the rain, or just the drink? He couldn’t tell.

It was too much, all of it. The vodka, the thoughts of her, the reminders of his own failings, his own awkwardness, his apartment walls suddenly too close. Even for just one person, the room was growing smaller.

He went to take another drink, but the bottle was too heavy to lift. He pushed the bottle away, gently as he would, and slumped pathetically on the floor. He wanted to cry, tried to force it out of his tired eyes, but tears and whimpers would not come. He wanted to be held, cradled like a beloved puppy, but such action would only remind him of her. He wanted to be alone, he wanted to not be alone. He wanted to be numb, to forget Michelle Lee, yet at the same time he wanted to wrap himself in memories of her.

            _Michie_...

What more could he do? What more could anyone do? Palmer knew that for now, the answer was nothing. He remembered the saying that time heals all wounds, and realized the truth in those words. Time made wounds fester, until they controlled the mind and soul, but the wound would heal, eventually. He knew he would recover, eventually. But right now, he wanted to wallow. At the moment, it suited him.

He dragged himself back onto the loveseat, nearly displacing the vodka bottle with his immobile feet. With heavy arms, he took off his glasses and dropped them on the floor next to the couch.

His last coherent thought that night was of her eyes. Her name, a whisper on the wind.

Then, black, all around him.


End file.
